ESLiminated

Once again It was my delight to pull from service a bunch of worthless and do nothing but false ESL 500 series smokes. .Although these were close to 12 years old the Systems sensor smokes in this friends fire station have never once falsed or needed replaced ,and still work like they are suppose to. Even the newer clean me ESL smokes I have floating around on various sites I have taken over cause me false alarm headaches as well and the clean me feature does not work the ESL smoke goes into alarm with out any indication they are dirty and will not reset. I still have system sensor smokes from BRK days and some old Hochiki smokes and newer DS smokes that have never given me any grief and work as designed. And when i go out with the fire company to a false alarm almost every time i can gaurantee its an ESL smoke that is falsing.

I have been replacing the ESL smokes with System sensor I3 and they have been fantastic.

Same here, Nick. For several years I installed ESL (now GE Security) smokes. They'd work OK for a year or so and then start to false -- not all of them, just more than other brands did. After a while I switched to System Sensor. There were significantly fewer troubles with System Sensor. Most of my DIY clients use System Sensor I3 series smokes and there have been almost no returns in several years.

Notes to newbies and DIYers: It is common trade practice to replace smoke detectors at least every 10 years. The average failure rate of modern smoke detectors is ~3% per year. Over a 10-year period that works out to roughly

25% failure which is considered the tolerance limit for life safety devices. If a detector is causing trouble and it's more than 5 years old consider replacing it rather than having it serviced.

I'll certainly agree that ESL smokes cause false alarms as they get older. They always have. I hate them with a passion.

But System Sensor smokes have problems all their own. They tend to stop working, and not tell anybody. For example, I went to a house we did about five years ago; the people finally decided they wanted monitoring. Two of the five smokes (2100 series) were no longer working. The lights blinked. The panel didn't see any problems (two-wire smokes). But when you pushed the test button on the smokes, nothing happened. And this is not the only house I've seen this on. (And yes, replacing the smoke solved the problem.)

So, would you rather have a detector that causes false alarms, or one that doesn't work at all?

- badenov

You push the "test button" to check if a smoke is working?? Our guys carry smoke detector tester.

Yeah, Frank, I carry canned smoke too. The point is, the manufacturer put that test button there for a reason. If you push the button and nothing happens, the smoke is defective. If you push the button and it trips, then you reach for the canned smoke and move on to step 2.

- badenov

I have never has a system sensor smoke not trip on test button.

Gotta shoot some canned smoke into them... the test button is notoriously unreliable as an indicator of functionality. That's why most Fire Marshal tests don't allow the test button as a proper alarm simulation test. Photo-electrics are pretty reliable, but the test button is a joke.

Nor have I and I seriously doubt the other gentleman has either.

About the only thing the "test button's" good for is to "test" the buzzer...